Be Anything
by Colorslander
Summary: Alyssa Zaidelle is a beautiful nothing. Oneshot.


"_Be Anything"_

Summary: Alyssa Zaidelle is a beautiful nothing.

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"You can be anything you want to be." Those are the words that run through Alyssa's head when she gives Serah the artefact.

It's the same words her parents once told her during simpler days, with pigtails in bubblegum pink ribbons and lunchboxes full of fal'cie grown food. The words were, of course, silly throwaway encouragements meant to make little girls smile. But for Alyssa the words become a doctrine.

She loves these words, nurtures them, cultivates them. If women could live on words alone, these would be hers.

Should be an actor? Should she be rockstar famous? Should she create something new and exciting? Should she become an artist, a genius, a teacher, a lover? Her young thoughts dance in her head, embracing all the possibilities with her bright eyes, bright smiles, and even brighter mind. She doesn't know where to start at fourteen but she is sure no matter where it begins, she'll succeed. Everything is possible.

And at fourteen it's those thoughts she holds onto desperately as she is dying underneath the Bresha ruins. Her beautiful blond hair buried under rocks, and darkness, and other ugly things- slowly being crushed underneath another man's past. She struggles to take a breath with punctured lungs and thinks to herself, "I can be anything I want to be, anything I want to be, anything I want to be, _anything._"

Purge be damned, she can be anything. Not even death will stand in her way. What kind of messed up, asinine world would let her end here, before she even really began.

When she finds herself with a renewed chance to really start on her path, she starts with a fire in her heart. She doesn't know how this happened, some mumbojumbo magic or fate, but she doesn't pause to argue with the gift of a second chance. There are lingering doubts and fears, the memories of her broken bones trapped below cold, merciless stone, but she does her best to bury them with wherever her body once was.

She enlists in the Academy, it's as fresh and reborn as she is, and she uses her ambition to carve her place at the top. She confronts problems and throws her all into them, curiosity and skill as her tools of trade. She decides to be a mathematician and as expected she's a good one, she bends numbers and rules with grace, molding solutions the way musicians compose scores. She loves what she does, she loves getting ahead in life, and she knows she will love what the future holds for her.

All eyes are trained on Alyssa now. Most out of adoration, although some admittedly don't quite know what to make of her, her ambition and drive unsettles some people. But that's okay because either way- everyone knows that she's earned her position at the top. She's conquered every hurdle, every rivals, her death, and now she's even conquered time.

She is everything she wants to be.

But because of Serah and Noel, her almost friends, all that she is now is hanging delicately by thread-slowly being stressed through the passage of time. Oh god, _oh god_, everything she's worked for, the hard work, blood, sweat, tears. The things she created, the people she has met, the moments that she loved, the days and years, everything that she is now, is it really going to be for nothing?

Hell no.

She makes that deal with the devil, and doesn't even blink. She doesn't know if that makes her evil or brave or just pretty damn stupid. But she knows that she's worked harder than anybody else to be who she is. And that hasn't changed at all, not fourteen and dying, and certainly not twenty-seven and at the top of her world.

So she he works with that damned Caius. She gives that damned artefact to Serah and watches her pass through that gate. She's never going to become nothing, after all, she remembers those words that gave her strength.

"I can become-" She pauses, and tries to reach for a beautiful memory that stopped existing. Those words that defined her.

Ah, what were they again?

What was she again?

I'm

…

I…

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Author's Note: I had this collecting dust on my computer for awhile now and decided to post in anyway. Alyssa is one of those odd characters that I don't particularly like but find her endlessly fascinating. Some of the most interesting arguments I've seen come out of XIII and XIII-2 is whether or not Alyssa was evil for what she did.

I kind of think that her fate is beyond haunting and it's a shame that the game really didn't get to expand on it, and the alternate ending made her look like a Scooby-doo villain rather than a girl who was faced with the idea of not existing.


End file.
